MSNBC’s Ari Melber hosted a panel on Sunday to discuss the tactical and strategic advantages and disadvantages of President Donald Trump’s airstrike on a Syrian air base on Thursday.

Melber said that political support of the president’s tactical strike is high, but there are lingering questions about what will happen next and whether the Trump administration indeed has a long-term strategy for the region.

Former House Judiciary Committee counsel and Democratic strategist Julian Epstein said that he doesn’t find the president’s actions in Syria to be a positive development.

“I think this was a symbolic gesture on the part of a president whose foreign policy has been entirely incoherent on this,” said Esptein. “It was a pin-prick.”

There was no degradation in the usability of the Syrian air fields or the chemical stockpile, he pointed out, “And in likelihood, Trump gave the heads up to Syria that he was going to perform this strike.”

“This is entirely incoherent in terms of the statements that Trump made just three years ago about the Syria not being their issue,” he continued. “This is entirely incoherent with the nationalism and the ‘America First’ nationalism that Trump announced. And you even see the incoherence today in the conflict between Haley and Tillerson in terms of what the real goal is here.”

Watch the video, embedded below:

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About the Author

David Ferguson is an editor at Raw Story. He was previously writer and radio producer in Athens, Georgia, hosting two shows for Georgia Public Broadcasting and blogging at Firedoglake.com and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book.